By George Monbiot, The Guardian blog
Established power in this country is surrounded by a series of defensive rings. As soon as you begin to name them, you see that the UK is a democracy only in the weakest and shallowest sense.
By Jason Bradford, Phil Jensen, Resilience.org
As The New York Times recently reported, “votes for the pro-Brexit Conservatives had 10 times the effective power of votes for the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats” as a result of the electoral system known as “first past the post.”’ And as Phil and I discuss, a voter in Wyoming has 3.6 times the electoral influence as one in California. Phil and I discuss some of the biggest structural problems with our elections and Constitution, as well as some of his ideas for solving them.
By Paolo Cossarini, Open Democracy
In a new book edited with Fernando Vallespín, I explore the links between populist politics and the specific dynamics that emotions trigger in contemporary societies. We investigate the extent to which the global rise of populism and the role of emotions in politics converge on a specific logic – one that goes hand in hand with current forms of communication centered on social media.
By Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian blog
Put bluntly: yes, Britain is mired in a democratic crisis. But it is one that is older, wider and deeper than this week’s debacle over Brexit and parliamentary sovereignty, and it features across our everyday lives.
![Two girls wearing banners with slogan "ABOLISH CH[ILD] SLAVERY!!" in English and Yiddish. one carrying American flag; spectators stand nearby. Probably taken during May 1, 1909 labor parade in New York City.](https://www.resilience.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/800px-Abolish_child_slavery-384x253.jpg)
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
With the dawn of industrialization, democracy in work went into reverse. What's important here is that most people know little or nothing of this history or cannot conceive of it in terms of loss of liberty. They simply accept the arrangements in their jobs as somehow ordained in a nominally democratic society, as how work must necessarily be organized.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Truth is a very difficult thing to come by. Usually, when humans stumble onto it, they don't even know they have. America started out as a nation skeptical of royal prerogatives and concentration of power. We've morphed into a gullible society easily manipulated by dreams of a techno-utopian future.
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
Democracy survives by the consent of the governed. It requires rules that are fair, just and followed—by everyone. Should the three branches ever become one, democracy will be lost.
By Richard Eckersley, Resilience.org
The crisis in democracy is much discussed these days, but almost entirely in political terms that ignore its deeper causes.
By Dick Rauscher, Dick Rauscher blog
Driven by zero-sum thinking, the rigid, inflexible, ideological thinking and obsessive need of our collective human ego to be absolutely and imperatively “right”, is rapidly driving our Nation and our American democracy toward collapse.
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
From Mother Earth's perspective, the most important ballots cast on November 6th could be in the 30 contests for state attorney general (AG). The role played by AGs in the nation's transition to a low-carbon economy is easily ignored in the heat of this year's Congressional elections.
By Ian Hughes, Open Democracy
Is it possible to transform politics around values such as empathy, solidarity and love? Many progressive commentators think so, and have laid out different plans to put these ideas into practice. But empathy and love seem in short supply in the actuality of politics today, crowded out by hate and intolerance.
By Gleb Tsipursky, Common Dreams
Rudy Giuliani, the former Republican mayor of New York City and now serving as President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, went on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday and declared with a straight(-ish) face that "truth isn't truth."